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Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) explained why Vice President Mike Pence, who headed the Trump transition team, may go down with Trump in the Russia scandal if he knew that Mike Flynn was under investigation in January 2017.

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Schiff said, Well. if this is accurate, what it says about the transition team and the President is that they were less concerned about whether Mike Flynn had a deep conflict of interest, may have violated reporting requirements or may be acting as an agent of a foreign power than they were having the guy that they wanted to have who was a personal friend apparently of the president. This is distressing at a number of levels, but I think what it underscores for the public, I think if they thought this was just a paperwork question. His failure to disclose that the was a lobbyist or register. They can now see the real world import, because if these reports are accurate and Mike Flynn was helping to make decisions even during the transition period affecting our approach to the war in Syria about we should arm the Kurds, and hes being paid by Turkey. You can see the real world impact of this conflict of interest and this failure to disclose, and of course, its worse if he did disclose it, and the White House brought him on none the less.

Vice President Pence claims that he didnt know that Flynn was being paid by Turkey until March 9, but it is being reported that Flynn disclosed to the Trump legal team that he was under federal investigation for his lobbying for Turkey on January 4.

As Schiff pointed out, the big problem for Pence is that if Flynn did report, he was under investigation in January, and Pence still made him Trumps national security adviser, that puts the Vice President in the middle of the Flynn part of the Russia scandal.

Mike Pence has a Mike Flynn problem, and if he lied about what he knew, and when he knew it, he is going to go down with Trump for the Russia scandal

Adam Schiff, Mike Flynn, Mike Pence, Pence could go down for Russia scandal, Russia scandal, RussiaGate

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Rep. Adam Schiff Explains Why Mike Pence Is Going Down For The Russia Scandal - PoliticusUSA

Some graduating seniors at the University of Notre Dame say they are planning to protest the presence of Vice President Pence at their commencement by standing up and quietly walking out of the ceremony. School officials say they wont try to stop them.

Pence will give the commencement address at the nations most prominent Catholic university on May 21 at the campus in South Bend, Ind. In the past, the university invited newly inaugurated presidents to give the address in their first year of office and six previous presidents accepted but this year was different.

Thousands of students and faculty members signed a petition asking Notre Dames president, the Rev. John Jenkins, not to invite him, saying that they did not think Trumps actions and behavior were in line with the schools values. While there were Trump supporters who wanted him to speak, the school decided to instead invite Pence, a former Indiana governor.

A coalition of student activist groups at Notre Dame called We StaND For is planning the walkout to protest policies Pence pursued as governor that they say targeted the most vulnerable. Other groups from outside the school community will, at the same time, hold a protest just south of campus to show solidarity with the students, according to Bryan Ricketts of We StaND For. One of the participating groups, South Bend Equality, wrote in a statement about why it is participating:

Our members lived in South Bend when Mike Pence was governor. We know all too well how his policies endangered or caused direct harm to public education, health care, womens rights, the environment, LGBTQ individuals, immigrants and refugees, reproductive rights, local infrastructure, the economy of our state, and more.

Other groups participating in the off-campus protest are We Stand For; We Go High! of St. Joe County, Ind.; Michiana Alliance for Democracy; Alliance for Democracy; the Nu Black Power Movement; Inclusive Michiana; Planned Parenthood of Indiana & Kentucky; and the IWW Local 26.

Paul Browne, vice president for public affairs and communications at the University of Notre Dame, said that student protest leaders have already talked to security police and other officials on campus about their plans, and the school isnt trying to stop them. He said the protesters plan to silently leave commencement at some point and do it in a respectful manner.

The action, he said, does not surprise school officials because the university has repeatedly been the scene of protests.

For example, some antiabortion activists protested President Barack Obama when he spoke at the 2009 graduation ceremony, and there were protests too for Vice President Joe Biden at the 2016 commencement, he said. Biden was there to receive the Laetare Medal, along with former Republican house speaker John Boehner; the award is the highest given to Catholics in the United States and recognizes service to the Catholic Church and society. There were protesters on campus, too, for a recent talk by conservative political scientist Charles Murray.

Its not unusual for us, he said.

Pence protest organizers are using the hashtag #WalkOutND to build support for their effort and say they expect scores of students and many more family and friends in the audience to participate. There will be about 2,000 graduating seniors at the ceremony.

Browne said the school was not concerned about the protests. Virtually our entire discussion at the moment is about the weather, he said. Thunderstorms may drive the ceremony from an outside venue, where students can have unlimited tickets for guests, to an inside auditorium where tickets will be limited, he said. (Correction: An earlier version said the six previous presidents had spoken at Notre Dame; it was six former presidents. Also clarifying wording on past protesters.)

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Notre Dame students plan to protest against Mike Pence at ... - Washington Post

A historian who has accurately predicted every presidential election since 1984 including Donald Trump believes the 45th president will not be able to finish his four-year term.

Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University, told CBC that Trumps decision to fire FBI director James Comey could be considered grounds for impeachment although hes not sure Vice President Mike Pence would take Trumps place.

The media has given Mike Pence a huge pass, Licthman said. He lied about Gen. (Mike) Flynn, he lied about the reasons why Comey was fired, and the media says he was misled. We dont know that he was misled, thats a supposition on the part of the media. In fact, maybe he was part of this whole operation right from the start, and maybe hes in it as deeply as Donald Trump we do not know, and an impeachment investigation needs to look at Mr. Pence, as well.

He noted that Comey was fired one day after former acting attorney general Sally Yates testified before Congress, and the president admitted the FBI directors dismissal was related to the Russia investigation.

Thats at least borderline obstruction of justice, Lichtman said. Add to that the fact that the White House pretty transparently conspired earlier with Rep. (Devin) Nunes to derail the House investigation into possible Russian collusion. Putting it all together, and youve got a probable cause case for obstruction of justice and theres only one way of dealing with that, constitutionally.

Lichtman said the Constitutions framers established impeachment to peacefully protect democratic institutions from a rogue president.

If Democrats stand firm, it would only take some two dozen Republicans to shift thats just 10 percent of Republicans in the House, he said.

He cautioned Democrats against pushing for a special prosecutor, because the president could hire and fire that investigator, and instead pursue an impeachment investigation in the House Judiciary Committee.

It would be conducted by another branch of government, it would be entirely independent of Donald Trump and it would have the clout to keep Donald Trump from obstructing it, Lichtman said.

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Historian who accurately called every election since 1984 blasts the media for giving Mike Pence's lies a pass - Raw Story

NewsBusters (blog)

HuffPost Writes a 'Particularly Gross Hit on Mike Pence' on Persecution of Christians NewsBusters (blog) Becket Adams at The Washington Examiner is calling out The Huffington Post for a particularly gross hit on Mike Pence. The vice president spoke on Thursday to the first-ever World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians, an event that the liberal ... About that Mike Pence speech: Are solid facts available on global ...GetReligion (blog) FACT CHECK: Mike Pence Called Christianity the Most Persecuted Religion. That's Very, Very TrueIndependent Journal Review See the Persecuted: Religious Minorities in Iraq and SyriaNational Review World Religion News -HuffPost all 14 news articles »

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HuffPost Writes a 'Particularly Gross Hit on Mike Pence' on Persecution of Christians - NewsBusters (blog)

When history holds its trial to account for the Donald Trump presidency, Trump himself will be acquitted on grounds of madness. History will look at his behavior, his erratic and childish lying and his flamboyant ignorance of history itself and pronounce the man, like George III, a cuckoo for whom restraint, but not punishment, was necessary. Such will not be the case for Mike Pence, the toady vice president and the personification of much that has gone wrong in Washington.

On any given day, Pence will do his customary spot-on imitation of a bobblehead. Standing near Trump in the Oval Office, he will nod his head robotically as the president says one asinine thing after another and then, maybe along with others, he will be honored with a lie or a version of the truth so mangled by contradictions and fabrications that a day in the White House is like a week on LSD.

I pick on Pence because he is the most prominent and highest-ranked of President Trumps lackeys. Like with all of them, Pences touching naivete and trust are routinely abused. He vouches for things that are not true no talk of sanctions between Mike Flynn and the Russians, for instance, or more recently the reason James B. Comey was fired as FBI director. In both instances, the president either lied to him or failed to tell him the truth. The result was the same: The vice president appeared clueless.

I dont feel an iota of sympathy for Pence. He was among a perfidious group of political opportunists who pushed Trumps candidacy while having to know that he was intellectually, temperamentally and morally unfit for the presidency. They stuck with him as he mocked the disabled, belittled women, insulted Hispanics, libeled Mexicans and promiscuously promised the impossible and ridiculous all that Day One nonsense like how the wall would be built and Mexico would pay for it.

I also have little sympathy for Sean Spicer, who plays the role of a bullied child. Trump routinely sends him out to lie to the American people, which he has done ever since his insistence that the inaugural crowd was bigger than the photos showed. He persists at his job even though Trump broadly hints that he will soon fire him. When Spicer is gone, he will be easily replaced. Washington is full of people who have no honor and no pride, either.

I think of Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, and Wilbur Ross, at Commerce. What possessed them to back Trump for the GOP nomination? Didnt they know the sort of man he is? Did they think a lower tax rate and fewer regulations are worth risking American democracy and our standing in the world? When they watched the bizarre way Trump sacked Comey, were they proud of their candidate?

The swamp that Trump kept mentioning in the campaign is not really one of tangled bureaucratic mangroves, but of moral indifference. Washington always had a touch of that after all, its business is politics but Trump and his people have collapsed the space between lies and truth. The president uses one and then the other whatever works at the time.

The president cannot be trusted. He cannot be believed. He has denigrated the news media, not for its manifest imperfections but for its routine and obligatory search for the truth. He has turned on the judiciary for its fidelity to the law and, once, for the ethnic heritage of a judge. Trump corrupts just about everything he touches.

From most of the Republican Party comes not a whisper of rebuke. The congressional leadership is inert, cowed, scurrying to the White House for this or that ceremonial picture, like members of the erstwhile Politburo flanking Stalin atop Lenins mausoleum. They are appalled, but mute. They want to make the best of a bad situation, I know, and they fear the voters back home, but their complicity ought to be obvious even to them.

America is already worse off for Trumps presidency. He was elected to make America great again, but his future is more like other nations sordid past. His own party has been sullenly complicit, showing how little esteem many politicians place in our most cherished values, not the least of them honesty and dignity. For all of them, an accounting is coming. When they are asked by history what they did during the Trump years, the worst of them will confess that they bobbled their heads like dumb dolls, while the best will merely say they kept their heads down.

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Trump doesn't embody what's wrong with Washington. Pence does. - Washington Post